Cav's Place

When somebody asked about the game on the MobyGames forums some time ago, neither the name nor the description offered in the question struck me as familiar, and I definitely didn’t recall playing it in all the years since I started trying to remember and identify all the games I played. However, out of simple curiosity, I clicked to see the game’s page and the instant I saw the name Velasquez the memories came back, the screenshots only serving to confirm what I already knew by the time I looked at them as well, namely that I had played the first part of the game shortly after release, when it was available as shareware, and the story and Velasquez as a character in particular had left quite an impression on me, even though I was only about ten at the time.
That may have been the end of it if I wouldn’t have also noticed that the game has been available for free, legally, since 2007. But I did see that and, since it’s a DOS game which should work just fine through DOSBox and also wasn’t supposed to be too long or too hard, I ended up downloading and playing it all the way to the end, just making my way through the actual missions, which are nothing to write home about, to read the whole story. And now I’m writing this as well.

Since I mentioned the missions, let me start with the fact that actually playing the game is more or less simply something you do in order to move on to the next part of the story. There is some variety, as you’ll get to drive through four different areas, piloting eight different vehicles, and sometimes you’ll also need to protect one or more targets, or to destroy others before they reach a certain location or flee the area, and sometimes the one who needs to reach a certain location is you, but in general you’re required to clear the area of enemies which are far from smart.
Admittedly, considering that your forces are usually vastly outnumbered even when you happen to have some wingmen, a better AI would have made the game terribly difficult, but the few different vehicle types and objectives aren’t enough to prevent boredom from setting in over the course of 59 missions against enemies that do little but try to go around obstacles in order to shoot you from behind and then simply go around again for another attempt, leaving their backs open to your shots once they pass you, as they seem to only try to avoid line of fire when you’re just about touching. Worse, they never use missiles, seem to get completely confused and do a little harmless “dance” around you instead of firing if you stand still, especially on a corner, and usually seem to only shoot in short bursts, at least unless they’re right behind you and you’re both moving. Of course, these issues affect allies as well, so they’re not much help when they happen to exist, but at least that means they don’t steal many kills either.
Otherwise, the controls are simple and mostly all right, but it may have helped to have a separate key for reversing in order to make the key for the direction you’re facing away from actually turn the vehicle around, and a key to fire missiles may have made them somewhat useful as well, instead of requiring you to press one key to switch to them and then the same fire key to shoot. It should be considered, however, that nobody has any protection from friendly fire and it’s next to impossible not to have “accidents” with allies around. The game does take it into account, as Velasquez states time and time again that she’s not picky about targets and will likely kill wingmen if they’re assigned to her, but doing so doesn’t matter otherwise and at times it can even help, unless of course you accidentally destroy a vehicle you were supposed to protect. On the other hand, enemies can kill each other just as well, which can be rather annoying if you’re trying to get a record number of kills.

To get these out of the way as well, as there really isn’t anything else to say about each category, the graphics pretty much do their job and run smoothly, the sound effects are quite utilitarian, while the music is decent but repetitive if you pay attention to it. Nothing to add to or subtract from the overall impression, though one thing that does subtract is the fact that a few bugs do exist that may make a few missions impossible to complete under certain conditions, requiring them to be restarted. And it is also a little annoying that the three parts of the game are entirely separate, so you can’t simply continue from one to the next and the number of kills and the resulting assessment are reset at the start of each.

But seriously, if you’re playing this game, it won’t be for any of that, but for the story, no matter how full of clichés it is, and for Velasquez. Yes, a game with many twists and turns and a strong but flawed character, even a strong but flawed female character, isn’t exactly uncommon today, but Traffic Department 2192 was released more than 20 years ago, and this makes quite a difference. The language also pushed boundaries, as the text includes plenty of swearing, insults and sexual references, some of them admittedly forced and childish, seeming to have been added merely for shock value, or perhaps out of a belief that this will make it more interesting to virgin teenagers with raging hormones. Others, however, help flesh out the personality of the characters, obviously mainly that of Velasquez and to some extent that of the Dispatcher, who’s the only one who seems to enjoy her attitude and frequently trades insults, quite obvious innuendos or direct invitations with her. I’m not sure how much of this is lost in the edited version, which the player may select to use, a help file also specifying how parents who don’t want their children to be able to read the original text may eliminate the choice and force the game to only use the edited version.
A limiting factor is the fact that the entire story, with the exception of the introduction, is presented through dialogues, the only other bits of text merely listing locations and times, so the game definitely didn’t care to make players feel like they’re reading a book in any way, but it may be somewhat akin to watching a play, which seems to work well enough. In fact, reading its script, which can be found in the game files and is also only a quick search away for those who want it in an even easier to read and more complete form, does pretty much feel like reading the script of a play and allows anyone to go through the entire story without actually playing.

In a way it can perhaps be said that, on a much smaller scale, Velasquez was a prototype “queen bitch”, albeit one trying too hard to play the part at times. There are even some parallels to draw in terms of transformation and potential redemption, though of course one shouldn’t go too far with this, as Kerrigan is, in my view, one of the best characters in gaming, incomparably better written and easier, or at least possible, to relate to and cheer for even at her worst. Velasquez, on the other hand, seems at times needlessly harsh, violent and even simply evil, the death of her father and the responsibility resting on her shoulders ceasing to be an acceptable excuse for her behavior at least through most of part two and possibly the start of part three, when the difference between her and stereotypical villains becomes increasingly blurred and any additional explanations are yet to be presented. Still, even then there are interesting moments that reveal other aspects of her personality and paint certain events in a different light, such as her conversations with Screwdriver, the way she settled the Dispatcher issue or her attitude shift towards a certain other synthetic once certain things were revealed.
On the other hand, just as her character becomes easier to understand and relate to, the story as a whole tends to rather fall apart towards the end, the writer appearing to run out of missions to go through the planned events and changes, and this affects her as well, the complete shift at the very end following the other elements of those final parts of the script in coming pretty much out of nowhere. It’s not only a matter of the lack of a more gradual change, but the fact that something seems to be completely missing and, seeing as part three has only 19 missions instead of 20, in may actually be that, for whatever reason, one of the final missions was cut and some explanations or hints of what was to come got lost along with it.

To conclude, with its overall forgettable gameplay, the at times forced and childish writing and the terribly rushed convenient ending, Traffic Department 2192 doesn’t exactly have anything to offer the players of today. However, a story like this in general and a character like Velasquez in particular definitely were unusual back when it was released and may have, at least to some extent, paved the way towards other, far more polished and better known, developments and milestones in terms of game storytelling and characters. For that reason, while likely not worth playing anymore except out of a more serious interest in gaming history or, as it was in my case, simple nostalgia, I do believe it deserves to at least be remembered.

Finished Traffic Department 2192 Saturday, being somewhat surprised when part three only had 19 missions instead of 20 and a particularly abrupt end, and since then I’ve been considering writing a review for it too, which was actually supposed to be this week’s first post. Not that there’s much to say, especially when it comes to gameplay, plus that it already has three reviews on MobyGames and I was saying I’ll review the games I finish if they have less than three there or if they have exactly three and I particularly like them, which wasn’t the case here. But, however forced and immature the writing is at times, there is something about that story, and about Velasquez in particular, that I think should be remembered, especially considering when the game was released.
Obviously, I didn’t quite manage to persuade myself of that enough to actually get to it so far and right now I’m not sure I’ll write it later either, but I have been submitting some more things on MobyGames over the past couple of days, I guess taking advantage of a somewhat more passable state of mind. Not sure how long that will last, but I guess I’ll keep doing it while it does, and maybe take some screenshots for Mice Men as well during that time, since I still didn’t.

Speaking of that somewhat more passable state of mind, it seems it also allowed me to volunteer when a group of independent journalists from here asked for help translating their stories to English, since they keep getting requests from abroad but only have a few translated so far. Then, after they rather quickly posted another message saying they’re overwhelmed with offers and will get back to people the following day, I just decided to risk it, picked an article, translated it and sent it to them. It could have been all for nothing, in case they already had it translated or it had been assigned to someone else, and the fact that I got no reply to either message the following day seemed to make that somewhat more likely, but after another day they did reply and said they didn’t have that one, so it was useful. And since I told them they know where to find me if they’ll need others done, I guess I rather signed up for something now and actually find myself wanting to be asked to do another these days, while I still feel up to it, no matter how much my head wanted to kill me after working on that first one. After all, things didn’t change for the better otherwise, so this more manageable state of mind won’t last long and if they’ll ask after it’s gone, it won’t be nice for anyone involved.

I guess I’ll have to wait and see, so now I’ll just end this with the usual update about running and say that this week marked another record on the route through the park, 20:43, so 20 seconds faster than last week. As for the intermediate times, I did settle on that spot I was considering for a new first one, reaching it in 4:46, while the next two were 10:02 and 16:01, respectively, making for new records on all but the second, where 10:01 remains the best time for quite a while now. Would really want to get back to the track and five kilometers, however, but I don’t know whether the work on it was finished or even whether the public will still be able to use it for free once that happens. Didn’t even try to have a look since then, though I could have easily done so a couple of weeks ago…

As you probably already know, National Geographic and Fox recently announced “expanding their partnership”, which so far only involved the National Geographic television channels, to create a new for-profit entity named National Geographic Partners, which will operate all of National Geographic’s “media and consumer-oriented assets”, the list including the television channels, as well as “magazines, National Geographic Studios, related digital and social media platforms, books, maps, children’s media, and ancillary activities, including travel, location-based entertainment, archival sales, catalog, licensing and ecommerce businesses”. In other words, pretty much everything the public will see, know or otherwise experience related to National Geographic will be controlled by Fox. To say that this is worrying would be an understatement.
Under the deal, which is said to have been valued at $725 million, Fox will own 73% of the new entity, though it is said that the two parties will be equally represented on the Board of Directors, while “the Board Chair will alternate annually, with Gary Knell, National Geographic Society President and CEO, serving as the Board’s first Chairman”. In other words, Fox may try to ease people into it, letting things keep going more or less as they are for the first year, then take over more noticeably once most people have forgotten about it and won’t be paying as much attention anymore, because it’s quite obvious they didn’t spend $725 million to own 73% of something and then not have ways to ensure that all decisions go their way, despite this little public relations trick of having an equal number of members from each side on the Board.

The first problem with that is, of course, the very fact that all those elements of a non-profit entity are now becoming a for-profit business, which will in itself greatly harm the direction, value and quality of the content, because people just aren’t watching the quality science programs anymore. While it so far remains a channel that those of us who found ourselves thrown out of Discovery‘s target audience years ago can still sometimes watch, signs of this can be noticed on National Geographic Channel and it’s quite obvious that things will only get worse, probably with Discovery being a sign of what’s to come instead of something to avoid at all costs. So expanding this to all National Geographic media and other assets and actually giving Fox control already paints a grim picture of the future.
But the other problem is likely the worst one, and I’m referring to the fact that Fox is known for its stance of denying climate change and generally being anti-environment, possibly even anti-science, and pushing forward a conservative right-wing agenda. Its Board of Directors includes, among others, a former director of metals and mining corporation Rio Tinto and the current Chairman of multinational mining and petroleum company BHP Bilton. Not that National Geographic didn’t already give serious reasons for concern, of course, for example when the message of a fair number of its articles about population was that it’s not in itself a problem and technology, development and, perhaps even more concerning, increased urbanization will eventually solve all issues it creates, or when genetically modified organisms were presented in a largely positive light on more than one occasion, but such a partnership makes it nearly a certainty that National Geographic will start being used to push forward an agenda that’s vastly different from what its stated mission is and pretty much the complete opposite of what it should be.

I’m not sure what the best course of action would be at this point, as the deal is done, but Climate Truth launched a petition asking the Board of Directors to “adopt policies that ensure editorial independence at all National Geographic properties, including appointment of a Public Editor to investigate complaints or editorial interference”. It seems far too little for me, but, once again, I’m not sure what the better move would be and at this point I doubt I’d consider anything as being sufficient, as having Fox control National Geographic and turning it into a for-profit business is completely unacceptable in itself, regardless of any assurances, guarantees or measures taken. In my view, the fact that, with the exception of the television channels, they had so far remained a largely independent non-profit was one of the main reasons why they had largely avoided joining others in this race to the bottom.
Should probably mention that I found another petition as well, started by someone on Care2‘s Petition Site and aiming “to shame the formerly non-profit National Geographic Society for selling out to a right wing propagandist” and seeking “a congressional champion” to “find a way to reinstate some of the old principles of diversity of broadcast ownership”. Doesn’t seem that many people know this exists, however, and extremely few have signed it, but the way it’s written makes it somewhat understandable, though a small edit actually improved it compared to what I saw when I first found it, by clarifying the target.
Otherwise, some are obviously suggesting boycotts, and that may in theory be quite effective once it’ll truly become a for-profit entity, but I’m once again highly uncertain, because it’s quite obvious that diminishing income was a large part of the reason behind this deal. In addition, a boycott at this moment will likely be too soon, as those changes aren’t implemented yet and the results won’t be reflected in the reports likely to have the greatest impact. Instead, such a move will likely cause a part of National Geographic’s core audience, as in the people who don’t want it to become what it’s likely to become now, to break ties with it and therefore no longer be in a position to react once noticeable changes will actually start being made. As such, this would actually make it easier for the target audience to be changed in ways that will make the new entity’s products more appealing for the masses, which will result in increased income, less oversight and greater ability to manipulate more people according to the interests of the new owners, so the exact opposite of what we should be aiming for.

I’m going to start this by saying that, after somebody asked about the game on the MobyGames forums and I immediately recognized the main character’s name when I read the description, I’m now playing Traffic Department 2192. In all these years of trying to remember all the games I played, I never thought of it, but the moment I saw that name it all came back instantly and I knew I played that first part, which was shareware at the time, so I now thought to play the whole thing, since it’s been freely available since 2007. And yes, those dialogues presented between the missions are the reason I’m playing it now as well, as the game itself is otherwise entirely forgettable.
In addition, as I also mentioned on that thread, somehow that also led me to recall that I had played something called Mice Men back then as well, and that game wasn’t even on MobyGames so far. So I submitted it and I may actually run the shareware version one of these days in order to get some screenshots to submit as well. Interestingly, the developer is still active, and even their old DOS games are still available, so I wonder what else isn’t there… Though I highly doubt I’ll run something just for the sake of submitting it, if I don’t recall playing it.

Moving on, last time I was saying that some of the issues I keep having with Avira Antivirus Pro may have been fixed after contacting support, but they definitely weren’t. I hadn’t noticed it trying to switch and then reactivating itself one day because the exact time when it does this got delayed by some 20 minutes after it crashed and I had to reboot with only the free version active, and that next day I rebooted just then myself, so it tried to do it as it was shutting down and then restarted normally, leaving some errors that I saw later in the system logs. Since then, it keeps doing this every day, at the new time, as it’s been doing all along since I made the license file invisible.
Another issue I discovered recently, however, is that scan jobs can no longer be started after running something through DOSBox, though the problem doesn’t appear by simply opening and closing DOSBox itself. Obviously, noticed this since I need to run Traffic Department 2192 in DOSBox, and then when I tried to scan something it simply didn’t do anything, requiring a reboot before I could scan again. This applies to any sort of scan job and I have clearly tracked down the issue to running a program in DOSBox, also testing it with the first Might and Magic, which I have from GOG.com, to rule out the possibility of me having added some strange settings while creating the configuration file for Traffic Department 2192.
Considering all of this, I’m more and more inclined to give up on Avira at the end of the week, or maybe at the start of the next, as it’s quite clearly the worst experience I’ve had during this period of testing. And that’s not even taking into account the Comodo Firewall glitch I experienced yesterday, when I tried to edit the HIPS settings for an Avira component to make it stop processing its permissions twice per hour and then, after rebooting to be able to try scanning again, found that all HIPS rules went missing. Fortunately, I had saved them just after installing Avira, so I could simply load that file and therefore not lose much, but I’m still wondering why this is happening, because so far I’ve had it happen both times when I uninstalled Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2015 and I thought it was caused by that for some reason, but obviously that’s not it.

As for this week’s run, the proper one was yesterday, once again during the day, and the time was 21:03, so a new record. As for the intermediate times, those were 10:04 and 16:16, plus about 4:50 in a spot that I’m considering for a new first such time, though I may have checked my watch a few seconds after passing it. This means I have a new record for the full lap as well, but I was three seconds slower than the previous record in the first part.
Yes, the route wasn’t crowded, but there were some people and I did lose a bit of time because of them, plus that I once again needed to stop for a few seconds because my shoelaces had come undone on one shoe. This stop was in the first part and it took more than three seconds, so without it I should have had records on all sectors, and when you take everything into account I should have also been able to drop under 21 minutes. But, perhaps more interestingly, I did this after running for probably some 3.5 of the four kilometers back from the bar where the activists meet the previous evening, in regular clothes, to get back before the start of the match. So, once again, I thought I’ll be tired and found out I wasn’t.

The break is over, the team took a little well-deserved vacation and also selected the spacecraft’s next destination, and now, as of today, New Horizons can resume transmitting the encounter data. So get ready, because 95% of what it recorded is yet to come and I’m quite sure they gave a higher priority to what the public is likely to be more interested in, so expect quite a few releases that will, or at least should, make quite an impact over the coming days and weeks.
Yes, patience will still be required, as the speed will be of a few kilobits per second at most and, while I assume New Horizons will have priority much of the time, DSN time is shared with all other active missions. In addition, those who want the lossless data will have to wait even longer, as that won’t even start being sent until the complete data set will be received in a more heavily compressed form, to ensure that less will be completely lost in case problems will appear later. But, as of today, information should keep coming and, depending on the rate at which they’ll process and release it to the public, something new should be available at the very least every week, and possibly even every day.